Wilkie Collins Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Wilkie Collins with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
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“There is no hope, if we look back at the past: there may be hope, if we look on to the future.”
Meaning & context
Mr Pendril urges Miss Garth to focus on what can still change rather than treating past disaster as proof that every future possibility is closed.
Source details
No Name, Project Gutenberg #1438. Mr Pendril speaks after the Vanstone sisters lose their legal and financial position; the surrounding dialogue immediately qualifies the hope as uncertain and dependent on future events.
Source identified2
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“I never forgot her; but the pang of remembrance lost its worst bitterness, little by little.”
Meaning & context
Franklin Blake says distance and new experience reduced the sharpest pain of remembering Rachel without erasing the attachment itself.
Source details
The Moonstone, Project Gutenberg #155. Franklin Blake narrates his attempt to recover after leaving England; the sentence continues by explaining the effects of time, distance and novelty. This is fictional reflection, not clinical guidance.
Source identified3
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“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
Meaning & context
Walter Hartright rejects a simple moral picture in which people behave with perfect consistency, allowing that even deeply flawed characters can act in mixed or unexpected ways.
Source details
The Woman in White, Third Epoch, ‘The Story Continued by Walter Hartright,’ section II, Project Gutenberg #583. Walter tells Marian ‘The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?’ while they assess Count Fosco after Marian reports his warning. It remains fictional moral reasoning about a particular antagonist rather than an empirical rule about human behavior.